USI referendum Monday 25th - Tuesday 26th

donvito99

errlloyd wrote: »

- Incidentally, it is also harder to vote in UCD than in other colleges, you have to vote at your polling station, you can't vote anywhere. We also don't keep the polling stations open for a huge amount of time.

Is it not the case that anyone can vote in Newman as polling winds down?

errlloyd

Yeah for the last 3 hours or so everyone can vote in Newman.

Well done to the "No" side, I never thought I would see such a sensible move while still a student in UCD. Loved watching the "Yes" side squirm at the thought of losing their "pull", best election so far :P

Raphael

Congrats to team Disaffiliation, it'll be very interesting to see how this progresses going forward.

Edit: Re: low turnout, 10% is, realistically, no less dramatic than the 20% turnouts that (afaik) top out Sabbat elections. Still pretty friggin undemocratic, but the way I see it everyone did vote.

1687 people said they wanted to disaffiliate
1039 people said they wanted to remain affiliated

And the remaining 22,000 people said they they don't care. Meaning disaffiliation makes 96% of people happy (ish) instead of 94%, so it's naturally the best choice.

And all the people who did care but didn't vote - A) an equal percentage of people on both sides probably cared but didn't make it down. So it most likely wouldn't have effected things and Tough Titty. If you care, vote, if not, complain in the privacy of your own head because you turned down the opportunity to have your say when you didn't vote.

Cereal Number

Well done from the northside, say no to any eejit organisation that had eejit gary redmond as the head.

errlloyd

Tbh a centralised electronic voting list (so anyone could vote at any polling station) would boost the vote by about 30%, but you risk having what happened in DCU today happen in UCD. I think because of costs we run almost the minimum polling time we can, while still having a decent chance of quorum.

For a while yesterday it looked like the "YES" side may be purposely avoiding canvassing to keep turnout low - now I have no evidence that happened, they may have all just simultaneously wanted lunch. But if that is the case I think low turnout may have been slightly "engineered". It was only for a short period around 4pm, more voting happened between 2pm and 3pm than traditionally happens in UCDSU elections, which caught everyone off guard.

I am not sure if I support fully online, I might talk to UL pres Adam Moursy about it, see what it is like down there.

P_1

errlloyd wrote: »

Tbh a centralised electronic voting list (so anyone could vote at any polling station) would boost the vote by about 30%, but you risk having what happened in DCU today happen in UCD. I think because of costs we run almost the minimum polling time we can, while still having a decent chance of quorum.

What happened in DCU?

errlloyd

P_1 wrote: »

What happened in DCU?

Internet crashed and polling had to be suspended today and re-opened tomorrow.

Amazingly our no vote may actually effect that result because of this.

P_1

errlloyd wrote: »

Internet crashed and polling had to be suspended today and re-opened tomorrow.

Amazingly our no vote may actually effect that result because of this.

Ouch! Yeah could be interesting to see what schenanagans happen with canvassing there tomorrow alright

WoollyRedHat

What was Ents referendum result?

Raphael

The vvote was Yes, but it failed to reach quorum (Was a constitutional amendment rather than a policy referendum, so needed a higher one)

WoollyRedHat

Raphael wrote: »

The vvote was Yes, but it failed to reach quorum (Was a constitutional amendment rather than a policy referendum, so needed a higher one)

Am I right in saying they wanted to reverse the decision of having a professional ents officer and return it to its orginal position?

Foxtrol

WoollyRedHat wrote: »

Am I right in saying they wanted to reverse the decision of having a professional ents officer and return it to its orginal position?

Yeah and in my opinion for totally self serving reasons. I would have been surprised if they didnt get the majority of the votes but delighted it didnt make quorum.

WoollyRedHat

Foxtrol wrote: »

Yeah and in my opinion for totally self serving reasons. I would have been surprised if they didnt get the majority of the votes but delighted it didnt make quorum.

Agree completely, happy they didn't get it passed and hope that will be the end of it.

Kinda find it messed up that Paddy Guiney was allowed to campaign for a USI yes vote, what with him hoping to get a position on USI for next year... correct me if I'm wrong.. completely self-serving and unethical. SU and their officers shouldn't have had involvement in pushing forward a particular position and should of promoted both options and leave it up to the students to choose. Their promotion of the vote was non existant nearly.

cuckoo

WoollyRedHat wrote: »

SU and their officers shouldn't have had involvement in pushing forward a particular position and should of promoted both options and leave it up to the students to choose. Their promotion of the vote was non existant nearly.

Agreed. Is there any electoral/referendum commission type body/person in the UCDSU to promote these votes and inform people what they are about?

Although, if sabbatical officers want to take holiday time and campaign that's their own business, and they plus any non-paid officers who chose to do so should emphasis they are doing so as individuals and not representing the SU.

kilrush

cuckoo wrote: »

Agreed. Is there any electoral/referendum commission type body/person in the UCDSU to promote these votes and inform people what they are about?

Although, if sabbatical officers want to take holiday time and campaign that's their own business, and they plus any non-paid officers who chose to do so should emphasis they are doing so as individuals and not representing the SU.

Always thought it was the Job of the Campaigns + Communication officer but i suppose with Paddy on holidays no one else really did it.But I presume its the President's duty from next year on since there is no C+C officer next year.

errlloyd

cuckoo wrote: »

Agreed. Is there any electoral/referendum commission type body/person in the UCDSU to promote these votes and inform people what they are about?

Although, if sabbatical officers want to take holiday time and campaign that's their own business, and they plus any non-paid officers who chose to do so should emphasis they are doing so as individuals and not representing the SU.

I think the election just swallowed up all the energy and time of everybody.

Traditionally it's C&C's job, but he felt strongly he had to get involved, I can't really fault him for it. There were posters printed and stuff, but the referendum itself was run over a very short time.

There were posters printed, but an effort to have a neutral information website feel by the wayside a little bit. A get out and vote campaign as such didn't really come to fruition. Almost everyone available to do grunt work ended up on one side or another.

kilrush

errlloyd wrote: »

I think the election just swallowed up all the energy and time of everybody.

Traditionally it's C&C's job, but he felt strongly he had to get involved, I can't really fault him for it. There were posters printed and stuff, but the referendum itself was run over a very short time.

There were posters printed, but an effort to have a neutral information website feel by the wayside a little bit. A get out and vote campaign as such didn't really come to fruition. Almost everyone available to do grunt work ended up on one side or another.

Ah yeah I'm not blaming anyone. Just would have liked to see a push to get more than 10% of us out to vote!

Sierra Oscar

So DCU vote to re-affiliate and NUIM vote to stay affiliated.

UCD out in the cold it seems.

errlloyd

kilrush wrote: »

Ah yeah I'm not blaming anyone. Just would have liked to see a push to get more than 10% of us out to vote!

Tbh I've said it before in this thread. I'd blame the polling times and a certain amount of bad luck.

It so happens if you check the master timetable a decent chunk of lectures on Mondays and particularly Tuesdays are "out of faculty" - so for instance lots of the Th L, M, N lectures Tuesday were things like Phsysics, Biology, Law and couldn't vote in arts.

Combine that with the fact that realistically we only had one day polling, (only 270 voted on Monday, so 90% of the vote was Tuesday). We actually did pretty good.

As far as I am concerned doubling the amount of canvassers would have had only negligible impact on the amount of people voting. Especially because from about 2pm on Tuesday we stopped actively canvassing for a NO vote and just began to ask people to vote (we were seriously worried about quroum).

Sierra Oscar

errlloyd wrote: »

Tbh I've said it before in this thread. I'd blame the polling times and a certain amount of bad luck.

Why blame polling times? People simply did not engage with the referendum. Both sides of the campaign are somewhat to blame for failing to convince the electorate to even cast a ballot.

errlloyd

Sierra Oscar wrote: »

Why blame polling times? People simply did not engage with the referendum. Both sides of the campaign are somewhat to blame for failing to convince the electorate to even cast a ballot.

You're not wrong in attaching some blame on us, but we tried pretty hard to fight the apathy, so I don't think you're entirely being fair. There was no evening box in arts on the first day of polling, that cuts out 535 votes from last years sabbatical elections. There was also no canvassing in science which explains why our turnout of 175 was nowhere near the turnout of 480 last year. That is 800 votes explained right away.

When you consider that for the most part there was only really 2 campaign teams dragging people into the polling station to vote its fairly impressive we got 2,700 people to vote at all.

I dunno what you would have the teams do differently, like the tag #no2usi was trending on twitter, it reached 120,000 people. The facebook page reached 37,000 people with 810 likes. The combined videos of both teams racked up over 4000 views. The college tribune ran a front page editorial on the topic, most of the front page being a simple "VOTE NO".

500 more people voted in this referendum, than voted in the fees preferendum last year. And that referendum was online, run over 6 days and was subject matter that everyone should probably have an opinion on.

Sierra Oscar

errlloyd wrote: »

You're not wrong in attaching some blame on us, but we tried pretty hard to fight the apathy, so I don't think you're entirely being fair.

True, to be fair those who got involved in the campaign are to be commended for at least trying to raise awareness about the referendum in the first place.

Out of interest, would there have been any way to have the referendum on the same days as the sabbatical elections - or is there a rule stating that they have to be held on different dates?

errlloyd

Sierra Oscar wrote: »

True, to be fair those who got involved in the campaign are to be commended for at least trying to raise awareness about the referendum in the first place.

Out of interest, would there have been any way to have the referendum on the same days as the sabbatical elections - or is there a rule stating that they have to be held on different dates?

The SU officers pushed for this in council back in October. I was actually the person who opposed it, on a number of grounds.

1: I wanted the referendum to dominate college media and social networking. The issues were complex and I thought that was the best way to get any real debate - you can argue potentially that the social media side turned into mud slinging rather than debate, but I am happy with the college media coverage.

2: I was worried most of the campaign teams on both sides would be too heavily involved in officer elections to give much time to the referendum. As it happened the no side had the support of 5 people running for positions, the yes side had the support of 2. I didn't know it was going to pan out that way in October, but either way having them on board was good.

3: I didn't want candidates in the elections to be dominated by the referendum. Like you'd be forcing the presidential candidates hands on USI. They may be forced to give a popular answer instead of a real answer.

4: At the time we thought the USI referendum might take place first semester, or at latest earlier in this semester. That would have given us more breathing room to process the result between the referendum and USI congress. Congress is first week after the break, so if we had the referendum next week there would be almost no time to discuss the fallout, either way.

I hope that clears it up. I know 12.5% is poor. But almost all of those 12.5% went in to vote on USI. I think 20% turnout would be great, but if most of those 20% go in to vote on something different, and just make a call on USI in the polling station, you're just sugar coating a less representative result.

TL;DR

I felt a standalone election gave a more accurate result.

cuckoo

Sierra Oscar wrote: »

True, to be fair those who got involved in the campaign are to be commended for at least trying to raise awareness about the referendum in the first place.

Totally agree, if it hadn't been for campaigners I wouldn't have noticed the referendum was taking place. And while I have a background knowledge of the issues this time, it makes campaign teams jobs harder when the first 3 minutes of a face to face interaction with a voter is explaining what the referendum is and only then getting to urge for a yes/no vote.

I'm still boggling at the low turnout for an ONLINE vote about fees.

With no campaigns and communication officer next year will things only get worse?

The UCDSU facebook page updates about welfare events and then there's a overload of clever cusine and ents stuff. The news section isn't the very up to date on ucdsu.ie. There is an opportunity there for the middle ground, to create info for students like me who only glance at the college media but who would like a general update on what the union has been up to without having to download and plow through officer reports to council. Maybe a weekly email to all students from the SU? the current email is what, 3 times a semester?

WoollyRedHat

kilrush wrote: »

Always thought it was the Job of the Campaigns + Communication officer but i suppose with Paddy on holidays no one else really did it.But I presume its the President's duty from next year on since there is no C+C officer next year.

That makes it even more bizarre.

errlloyd wrote: »

I think the election just swallowed up all the energy and time of everybody.

Traditionally it's C&C's job, but he felt strongly he had to get involved, I can't really fault him for it. There were posters printed and stuff, but the referendum itself was run over a very short time.

There were posters printed, but an effort to have a neutral information website feel by the wayside a little bit. A get out and vote campaign as such didn't really come to fruition. Almost everyone available to do grunt work ended up on one side or another.

Well I can, does he have an impartial complex? Is it really that hard?